Go Tell It!: How a Surrendered Life Can Transform Lives and the World One Story at a Time

By Debby Efurd

Go Tell It! provides compelling stories of hope and transformation of lives who have each made a “180” by finding and sharing their voices.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clovercroft Publishing
• Release date: Sep 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781942557012

Book preview

PROFESSOR

INTRODUCTION

My fondest memories as a child were times spent with my grandmother. With her, I felt safe. She was a refuge the many times my mother shuttled my brother and me to our grandmother’s house after my parents had an argument.

I can still smell the aroma from her kitchen. She was the best cook in the world. Her pot roast with brown gravy, her fresh-made rolls and butter, her rice pudding, and her specialty—peach cobbler!

I remember the house filled with fresh-cut flowers. Her starched sheets created a natural slip and slide when I jumped on the bed. That was the best sleep in the world: on starched sheets next to a window where the gentle summer wind blew across the bed.

But nothing compared to her stories. Curling up in her lap, pressing against her soft, generous flesh . . . her arms were so fun to wiggle! She read me countless fairy tales and fables and told me stories from her youth. She swept me off to a make-believe world, one where everyone lived happily ever after.

It’s a funny thing about stories. Just about every story I have heard are alike in that they have the same elements of Control . . . Choice . . . and Consequence. Looking back in my own life, that’s what happened to me. I took Control . . . I made a Choice . . . and I bore the Consequences. Some of those consequences resulted in years of guilt, shame, and regret that robbed me of real joy in life, holding onto a secret so tight I thought I would carry it to my grave.

But that wasn’t God’s plan. And so my journey began . . .

PART I

LEARN IT!

Going through a waiting period doesn’t mean there is nothing happening, because when you are waiting on the Lord, He is always moving in your life.

—STORMIE OMARTIAN

January 2013

As long as I can remember, I wanted to be on the radio. Arriving early at the radio station, I was a bundle of nerves as I mentally prepared for the recording session.

I had so many questions. Would I stumble over my words? Would I even be coherent? What would the radio host ask me?

But the biggest question of all was . . . how had I gotten here?

—Debby

CHAPTER 1

The Formative Years

Your hands made me and fashioned me; give me understanding, that I may learn Your commandments.

—PSALM 119:73, NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE

Deborah Jan Ferrell was born October 24, 1951, in Dallas, Texas, at Methodist Hospital. That’s me. My dad (Linden Aubrey, or LA) was forty-five when I was born and my mom (Janis) was thirty-nine. My parents were older than the parents of all of my friends—mainly because they had both been previously married. I had a half-sister (Betty) and a half-brother (Jack) from my dad and mom, respectively. We were a blended family before that term became common. Actually, we were more like a family bush than a family tree. I knew both my parents had multiple marriages, but it wasn’t until I was sixteen when I learned my dad had been married another time. Even my grandmother had had a divorce, at a time when divorce was unheard of.

I grew up during what many called the Cold War, counterculture, and civil rights era. In the decades following World War II, the US became a global influence in economics, politics, the military, culture, and technology. It was an era that saw the space race, the Vietnam War, the Cuban missile crisis, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, and the assassination of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

Yes, I grew up in an era of flower children, hippies, and free love. From 1951 on, there were many changes in the nation and the world as well as in our culture. What did this cultural shift mean to me? For one, it created the perfect environment for me to be rebellious. That word rebellious fit me to a T.

My first home was actually my grandmother’s house. She lived exactly one mile from our home in North Oak Cliff, a Dallas suburb. My mother took me straight to my grandmother’s house from the hospital because my dad was taking care of his mother (Nettie). I never had the opportunity to meet Nettie . . . she died three weeks after I was born. I wish I had met her; the stories I was told about her made her sound like she was a very strong woman who took care of her large brood single-handedly. My favorite Nettie saying that my dad told me over and over again was I am what I am, but I ain’t no am-mer. It would be years before I fully understood and appreciated what that meant.

As I grew up, I don’t remember many happy times at home, but I do remember loving my grandparents’ house. I was there a lot. My grandmother Bom-Bom, as my brother and I called her, and Ninny, our grandfather, doted on us. Yes, the sun rose and set on their daughter, my mother, and my brother and me.

I was raised in Oak Cliff, across the Trinity River. I lived blocks from the Texas Theater, which would later become famous in 1963 when Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested. I remember trolley cars on Jefferson Boulevard, spending Sundays at Polar Bear Ice Cream, and trips for snow cones at Aunt Stelle’s.

My parents loved me, without a doubt. I was the baby of the family. They saw to it I went to church every week, took every kind of lesson imaginable, practiced the piano daily, and earned my Girl Scout badges. We would take Sunday drives all the way to a little town south of Dallas called Duncanville.

I grew up attending Cliff Temple Baptist Church. My mother had me enrolled in the Cradle Roll (babies), Cherub Choir, Girl’s Auxiliary, Training Union, and Vacation Bible School. In between being at church, I had dance lessons (tap, ballet, jazz), piano lessons, roller skating, two ice skating lessons, and four bowling lessons. Obviously, I didn’t catch on to ice skating and bowling very well.

I remember a lot of the time, our family was loving. But the times when there were fights (and there were many), everything seemed to turn upside down. In my home there were undercurrents of dysfunction and conflict. Everyone walked on eggshells. Anger was internalized, but there were always the eventual eruptions. I didn’t like the conflict, but I didn’t know families could be different than mine. I thought all families fought, left, returned, tried to make up, then fought some more. I thought everyone kept secrets, never expressed feelings, avoided conflict, internalized anger, and blew up like a volcano.

My grandparents were a rock for me. It was there we would flee when my parents had a fight. It was there I spent holidays and most summers. We would go to East Texas to see my Aunt Dodie, spend time in the country, and hear the best stories ever! My grandfather would take me to fishing rodeos. I even won first place for catching the most sun perch in thirty minutes. To win a prize for fishing was amazing, seeing how I refused to bait the hook or touch the fish. Just like my grandmother Nettie, my grandmother Bom had favorite sayings. My favorite was You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. I could never quite figure out how a pig’s ear could become a purse.

I was raised to be a model child and was expected to be prim, proper, and perfect in all things. Naturally, I fell short . . . who could possibly be perfect? So when mistakes were made, and they happened often, someone had to be the scapegoat, and it usually fell on some poor, unsuspecting soul (like one of my friends). Looking good and putting a good face on was of primary importance to my mom. As I thought about it, she was probably trying to live her life through me.

My first experience of real fear came on April 2, 1957. It was a normal spring day. Mom was cooking dinner and I was watching American Bandstand. Then the TV and lights went off. It was dark in the house without electricity, but not as dark as it was outside. Mom ran through the living room, scooped me up, and we went out on the front porch. The sky was pea green; the trees, unnaturally still, without a single leaf moving. It was like all the air had been sucked out of the sky. My mother ran to a neighbor’s house, found my brother, and dragged him home. I could see the fear in her eyes. I wanted to cry, but I was too scared. We heard the tornado long before we saw it. There it was . . . a huge funnel with all kinds of stuff whirling around the top, filled with breaking glass and popping noises. What lasted a few minutes seemed like an eternity. As soon as the tornado passed, we hopped in the car and drove to my dad’s service station, or what was left of it. Police and ambulances were everywhere. All of Dad’s employees narrowly escaped the tornado by running for cover, all except Big Willy. He was too loyal to my dad to leave for safety’s sake. Daddy, thankfully, had left earlier to pick up parts for the station. If he had been at the service station, I often wondered if he would have run for cover or stayed with Big Willy. The fear I felt was etched permanently in my memory. Now every time I hear a tornado siren or we are under an alert, my heart starts racing. That’s what real fear can do.

Growing up, I was always afraid I would say or do the wrong thing and upset my parents, causing an outburst. When my parents had a fight, my mother was the one who left, gathering my brother and me and driving to my grandparents’ house. In a few days (or a few weeks), my parents would make up, and we’d go back home and never talk about what happened. Within a month or two, there would be another argument and another trip to grandmother’s.

My family was small in number. When I was a teenager, I discovered that both my mom and dad had cut themselves off from other family members. As an adult, I would meet members of the family I never knew and remember wishing I had had the chance to know them when I was younger. No cousins, one uncle, one aunt. Fights in the extended family had been going on for years. Those relationships were never restored.

When I was in the fourth grade, my parents divorced. They remarried after a year, remained married for thirteen years, and then divorced again. You could definitely call their relationship a roller coaster (about the size of the Goliath at Six Flags Magic Mountain). I remember my dad was angry a lot. My mother told me he drank, but I never witnessed his drinking. All I saw were the results of their relationship—arguing, running away, attempts at short-lived reconciliation, and the insecurity I felt.

At age seventeen, I tried to run away from home. One day, when my parents were working and I was supposed to be at school, I took my dad’s car and headed to Kentucky, where my brother lived. I only made it as far as Texarkana, though, before I ran out of money and headed back home. I thought I had gotten away with my little escapade, but my dad got home early that day, leaned against the car, felt the hot engine, and then checked the mileage. I was caught!

I grew up feeling insecure and looked for comfort wherever I could find it. I found that comfort in food. It made me feel good about myself and was my go to during conflicts in our home. But the more I ate, the more weight I gained, so my weight battle only added fuel to the fire to an already low sense of self-esteem. I wanted to have friends and be accepted so desperately. But in my family, we never expressed our feelings—we just stuffed them. So, holding onto secrets and never talking through conflict, I suppose it was natural for me to turn to food for comfort. I succeeded at eating . . . very well. As a teenager, my Mom found a doctor